Overview
NAIRY BAGHRAMIAN
Side Leaps
10 June – 24 July 2021
Opening Thursday 10 June, 3-8 pm
“The sculpture should have the chance not to fulfill expectations.” —Nairy Baghramian
At Librairie Marian Goodman, Nairy Baghramian is showing a selection of drawings from her Side Leaps series first shown at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York in 2019. This accompanies her Paris exhibition on view concurrently. These drawings, done in pencil, ink or gouache on paper, are preparatory works for sculptures that will never exist, sketches for phantom works one might say. The Side Leaps drawings and models are the subject of a new book published by the gallery, which features numerous illustrations as well as a text on the artist’s work by art historian and curator Miwon Kwon and a conversation between Nairy Baghramian, Marian Goodman and Philipp Kaiser, Chief Executive Director of Artists & Programs at the gallery.
NAIRY BAGHRAMIAN
Side Leaps
10 June – 24 July 2021
Opening Thursday 10 June, 3-8 pm
“The sculpture should have the chance not to fulfill expectations.” —Nairy Baghramian
At Librairie Marian Goodman, Nairy Baghramian is showing a selection of drawings from her Side Leaps series first shown at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York in 2019. This accompanies her Paris exhibition on view concurrently. These drawings, done in pencil, ink or gouache on paper, are preparatory works for sculptures that will never exist, sketches for phantom works one might say. The Side Leaps drawings and models are the subject of a new book published by the gallery, which features numerous illustrations as well as a text on the artist’s work by art historian and curator Miwon Kwon and a conversation between Nairy Baghramian, Marian Goodman and Philipp Kaiser, Chief Executive Director of Artists & Programs at the gallery.
Nairy Baghramian, born in 1971 in Iran, is a visual artist living and working in Berlin since 1984. Her work has been the subject of monographic exhibitions in an array of institutions, including MUDAM, Luxembourg (2019); Festival d’Automne à Paris at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts (2018); Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2018); SMK, Copenhagen (2017); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2016); S.M.A.K, Ghent (2016); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2015); Museo Serralves, Porto (2014); the Art Institute of Chicago (2014); Serpentine Gallery with Phyllida Barlow (2010); Studio Voltaire London (2009); Kunsthalle Basel (2006). Baghramian also participated at Venice Biennale (2019 and 2011); Yorkshire Sculpture International (2019); Documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens (2017), Skulptur Project Münster (2017 and 2007); Lyon Biennale (2017); Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, Scotland (2012); and the Berlin Biennale, Germany (2014 and 2008). Baghramian was a nominee of the Hugo Boss Prize 2020 and has been the recipient of the MalcolmMcLaren-Award with Maria Hassabi (2019), the Zurich Art Prize (2016); the Arnold-Bode Prize, Kassel (2014); the Hector Prize, Kunsthalle Mannheim (2012); and the Ernst Schering Foundation Award (2007). Upcoming solo exhibitions of Nairy Baghramian include Secession, Vienna, Austria (2021), Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2022), Carré d’Art, Nîmes, France (April 2022); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, USA, (2022). Her works are held in institutional collections as for example Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Tate Modern, London; MUDAM Luxembourg; Tamayo Museum, Mexico; Jumex Museum, Mexico City; Nasher Art Center, Dallas; Art Institute Chicago, Chicago.
Press contact: Raphaële Coutant raphaele@mariangoodman.com or + 33 (0) 1 48 04 70 52
Inquiries: inquire@mariangoodman.com
"The Side Leaps have accompanied my sculptural practice for many years, but I don’t necessarily make drawings with every work group. It is more here and there, like notes that you make, or footnotes. Sometimes, the footnotes in a text are more important than the main text. However, I intentionally never dated the Side Leaps, precisely in order to call into question the linear thinking in relation to the sculptural body of work and its significance."
—Nairy Baghramian
"The Side Leaps are strands of production on the periphery. They circulate in and operate from the periphery, and hence were not part of my visible production—until now, they were not included in my exhibitions. The background of my interest in the subject of the drawings and models not designated for realization was my study of the destruction and prevention of works in totalitarian regimes under oppressive political circumstances, for example, under Fascism or Stalinism. Utopian formulations could not be realized, and the drawing remained a relic of its moment. I was aware of a kind of phantom pain of absent or unrealized works that either could only remain ideas or, in the case of decadent art, were debased and surrendered."
—Nairy Baghramian
selected works
"I like it when my titles lead somewhere and then lead away from that place again. Side Leaps can also be read as Seitensprung [literally, “side jump”], meaning a secret relationship. This play on words also seems quite !itting in relation to my sculptural practice. I really liked the idea of becoming unfaithful to oneself."
—Nairy Baghramian
Publication
Nairy Baghramian
Side Leaps
Miwon Kwon, 2021
Marian Goodman Gallery
Hardcover
88 pages, 11 1/4 x 8 3/4 x 1/2 in.
ISBN 978-0944219-49-2